Beckett's Breath: Anti-Theatricality and the Visual Arts - Paperback

by Sozita Goudouna (Author)

Examines the intersection of Samuel Beckett's thirty-second playlet Breath with the visual arts

Samuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. Breath (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. The book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism.

Key Features

• Examines Beckett's ultimate venture to define the borders between a theatrical performance and purely visual representation
• Juxtaposes Beckett's Breath with breath-related artworks by prominent visual artists who investigate the far-reaching potential of the representation of respiration by challenging modernist essentialism
• The focus on this primary human physiological function and its relation to arts and culture is highly pertinent to studies of human performance, the nature of embodiment and its relation to cultural expression
• Facilitates new intermedial discourses around the nature and aesthetic possibilities of breath, the minimum condition of existence, at the interface between the visual arts and performance practices and their relation to questions of spectacle, objecthood and materiality

Front Jacket

'Ms Sozita Goudouna's book left me breathless.' Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research Examines Beckett's ultimate venture to define the borders between a theatrical performance and a purely visual representation Samuel Beckett wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. The piece became emblematic of interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. This study considers a wide range of possibilities of understanding and redefining the context in which the corporeal function of breathing is represented in art. Breath is examined here both as a minimalist art work that contributes to the debates on minimalism and (anti)theatricality led by Michael Fried as well as a text for and related to contemporary art production. Beckett's Breath attends to fifty breath-related artworks - including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art - and contextualises Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism. Preface by David Cunningham. Sozita Goudouna is the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Performa New York and Teaching Fellow at New York University. She co-curated, with Paul B. Preciado, a project for 'The Parliament of Bodies' at Documenta 14 and worked for the Onassis Foundation in NYC. Cover image: (c) Constantine Alivizatos Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-2164-5 Barcode

Author Biography

Sozita Goudouna is the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Performa Institute in New York and Teaching Fellow at New York University. She co-curated, with Paul B. Preciado, a project for 'The Parliament of Bodies' at Documenta 14 and worked for the Onassis Foundation in NYC.